He was flying. For a brief instant the wings he never had stretched and fluttered as he flew through light and harmony. He soared through the air, magnificently free, and for once in his life, truly happy, but then, like Icarus, he fell—onto his bed.
The door opened. Mycroft entered to see his teenage brother in a state of unequivocal bliss.
"Sherlock," he said. "What's going on?"
"I'm free, Mycroft," he laughed. "Like a bird out of its cage—I'm flying!"
Mycroft's face fell. Something was wrong. "Sherlock," he said slowly. "Kindly roll up your sleeve."
The eighteen-year old refused flatly, and indeed folded his arms. His eyes were distant, and Mycroft already knew what had happened. It was an experiment.
"Sherlock, don't make me force you." He glared at his younger brother.
"Mycroft, you don't understand. I'm happy. For the first time in my life, I'm actually happy!" Sherlock's face was somewhere between ecstatic joy and vague distance.
Mycroft sighed. "Have mum or dad seen you tonight?"
"No. Don't tell them."
"Where did you get it?"
"I'm not stupid, Mycroft. If I tell you, you'll arrest them and then I won't be able to feel like this." He shuddered slightly with the effect of the drug. "You know how much they hate me. I need to escape."
"They don't hate you, they—"
"They think I shouldn't be who I am. They think I should be you. They don't want me to be me. Besides, there's nothing else for me to do here. I leave for University in a month, and neither of them have talked to me in days."
"Sherlock," Mycroft said, putting his hand on his brother's shoulder. "You have to understand that mum and—"
"And now you're defending them? I thought I could trust you, Mycroft, I really did." Sherlock fell back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling glorious and above everything. He was a fallen god striding amid the lives of mere mortals.
Mycroft sighed and left the room, knowing this could possibly be the start of something tragic. Or perhaps the crash that would soon ensue would be enough to put him off his experiment. He didn't know.
Mycroft "accidentally" let slip Sherlock's behavior of the previous night over breakfast. The only reaction was a death-glare from Sherlock and a tight-lipped stare from their mother. Their father hadn't heard—he was too absorbed in his newspaper. The three of them made Sherlock sign a contract, enforceable by law, that he was never to use it again while under their roof.
Sherlock never used cocaine while in university, but after he graduated, he found the memory of the high far more appealing and would eventually turn into a full-blown addict, just one needle away from the hospital or the morgue.